James Baldwin, in a letter to his nephew, wrote the famous lines â€œIt is notpermissible that the authors of devastation should also be innocent. It isthe innocence which constitutes the crime.â€ Writing at the 100thanniversary of U.S. Emancipation, Baldwin was telling a tale of a historyentrapped, but it is this same notion of innocence and history thatresearch methodologies, disciplinary factions, and a damagingly naÃ¯veWestern critical framework of academia must confront in order to stop theperpetuation of lies almost intrinsic to our scholarly practices. Inwriting today, is there impunity to be found in acts of addressing, siftingand re-writing through lies? Is there the knowledge of possible impunityfrom the consequent knowledge of this entrapment in which weâ€"academics,intellectuals, artistsâ€"are willingly initiated, caught and imputed? Whatare the risks and hopes of such engagements?

Sifting Through Lies: Toward an Aesthetic Impunity, the 20th Annual StonyBrook Manhattan Graduate Conference to be held February 15th and 16th,seeks to focus on the fault lines of what can be accounted for and what newbreaks must be made in order to redress the violent past archaeologies ofthought and practice committed by our predecessors.

To those interested in submissions, the abstract length is 250 words, dueDecember 20th. Abstracts can be sent to liesconf_at_ic.sunysb.edu.Note thatrequested paper length is to be delivered within 15 minutes. The fee topresent is $25 in advance, $30 at the door. Following the conference,select papers will be considered for publication in a peer-reviewed volumeof essays.

There will be a gallery opening and reception Friday, January 25th, 2008 at5 p.m. Introduction by Dr. Eduardo Mendieta (Stony Brook University) andtalk by Coco Fusco following the showing. The gallery will be open to thepublic from 12-2 p.m. Monday-Friday January 28th through February 14th onthe 2nd floor of the Stony Brook Manhattan Campus building.

This symposium, the longest running graduate conference in the UnitedStates, invites but does not limit papers on the following topics:

Theories of the Nation and Global Capital

Citizenship and SubjectivityDetention, Torture, Definitions of Life

Archival Constructions and Deconstructions

Archaeologies of Knowledge

Depression, Pain, Violence and the Literary Text

Poetics

Musical Theory and Literature

Aesthetics of Historical Narratives

Epistemologies (nuanced databases/technologies of knowledgeâ€¦)

Investigations into Literatures of Young Writers and New Narratives ofâ€˜third worldnessâ€™,the postcolony, the nation, the multitude which question tensions anddebates between locality and globalization

(Market) Boundaries of Languages, Disciplines, Bodies and Nations

New/Contemporary Forms of The Griot

Ethnographies and Anthropologies of the Live/Living Text

Mainstreaming Queerness

Queerness and Race

Race Theory

What happened to the Womanist Movement?

Sociology of the Body

Dance & Bodies in Motion

Visual, Performance and Installation Arts

Science, Technology and Aesthetics

Media Representations of Blackness (BET, TVOne, The Imus and Isaiah ThomasScenarios and Language, Current Debates in Hip-Hop)